Other Young Americans Are Spending A Whole Lot Less On Video Games This Year (2025)

Read from gamspot:

Perhaps responding to economic uncertainty and narrowing job prospects, young people in the United States are significantly cutting back on spending on video games compared to this time last year. While 18- to 24-year-olds aren't buying as much across a range of different categories, losses are concentrated in games.

New data published by market research firm Circana and reported by The Wall Street Journal suggests that young adults spent nearly 25% less on video game products in a four-week span in April than in the same timeframe last year. Other categories also dramatic drops: Accessories (down 18%), technology (down 14%), and furniture (down 12%). All categories combined, the 18-24 age group spent around 13% less than last year.

This decrease is not reflected among older cohorts, whose spending has been mostly stable year-over-year. The WSJ report suggests that the economic context could be driving young adults to pull back; a tighter labor market, increased economic uncertainty, and student-loan payments restarting all may be contributing to an environment hostile to the spending habits of 18- to 24-year-olds in particular.

This is potentially a warning indicator for the games industry, which has already been struggling under multiple rounds of layoffs and a reduction in revenue growth (despite often record-high profits).

It's called young Americans aren't payed as much as older generations as well as the cost of living going up. I bet a vast majority of them can't even get 20/hr or even a steady job in general.

When I was in my early 20's I was working at Walmart, barely making enough for my wife and I to pay rent, bills and get groceries and this was over a decade ago so I only got new games here and there. Plus there's games you can play for free these days, something we really didn't have until the late 10's so it makes sense for younger gamers to gravitate towards playing free games and skipping out on buying new games.

I think a lot of young people are happy playing older games on older consoles like the Playstation 4 and older Playstations like the PS3 and PS2, and free to play PC games.

There are some PC game and mobile download giveaways which may cause fewer people to buy games.

Saw this from the game business:

“We’ve seen dramatic swings every time we talk to consumers so far on where they stand on tariffs,” Piscatella told the audience.

“About 35% of people we spoke to in January probably didn’t know what a tariff was. They’d started to hear more about it by March, and the opposition of tariffs strongly increased. In January we had a net 9% support of tariff that was across the board, democrat supporters, republican supporters… it didn’t matter. By March, it had fallen to down 6%. By April with all the announcements made about it, it came back up a bit to a negative 1.1%. So consumers are still figuring this out. And the group in the middle, the 30% of consumers who still don’t know where they stand on tariffs, are waiting to see the impact.”

No matter the views on tariffs, the vast majority (69%) of people believe tariffs will result in higher prices. The differentiator between those who support and don’t support tariffs is around the impact on jobs and wages. Those who support tariffs believe it will have a positive impact on wages and employment, but those who oppose think it’ll have a negative impact.

As a result of the tariff uncertainty, 40% of consumers plan to cut back spend. And out of that group, around 30% said they plan to cut back on entertainment subscriptions and video games. So not everyone is going to cut back on gaming, but a proportion of the market is or will.

“Mobile is struggling a bit this year, the console space has been struggling a bit going into the launch of Switch 2, we will see how powerful and sustained that launch is,” Piscatella said. “But generally, we have a consumer who is a little bit concerned, is holding back a little bit, and really need to be pushed with the concept of value for their gaming dollar.”

“People still love video games,” he said. “People are still very excited. It’s a wonderful category that continues to do amazing things. But they’re looking for value. We’ve been doing a lot of $80 games and subscription and free-to-play, but no matter what, the consumer has to believe they’re getting good value for their dollar.”

He added that this might be why subscription services have started to grow again this year: “We saw a subscription market boom during the pandemic window. Then it flattened. It was flat for a couple of years. We saw an uptick when Call of Duty made it to Game Pass… but after that, we saw an uptick in February, and in March and in April. That could be content related, but it also could be consumers saying ‘I want to have better value for my dollar, so I am going to lean into those categories that could deliver that’. So keep an eye on that.”

Leave it to Nintendo to raise the Switch 2 price in Canada and think tariffs are to blame in the US, compared to a bunch of other countries where it's unaffordable.